Journalism lost one of its old workhorse word mavens this past Sunday, when curmudgeonly conservative James J. Kilpatrick — once the nation’s most widely syndicated political columnist, and author of a dozen books on politics, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the English language — died at age 89.
Known to his friends as “Kilpo,” Kilpatrick rose from cub reporter to one of the country’s most-recognized voices on the right. Americans over the age of 50 will remember him for his take-no-prisoners verbal food fights with liberal commentator Shana Alexander on the “Point-Counterpoint” segment of CBS’s “60 Minutes” program in the 1970s.
Others may recall him as the voice of conservatism through his newspaper columns, which the Bangor Daily News carried, as well as for his likes and dislikes wherein it pertained to writing.
In reporting on Kilpatrick’s death, some newspapers cited one of his widely quoted observations in urging aspiring writers to stick to using familiar words in their prose. “When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away,” he counseled.
“Keep it simple” is difficult advice for many writers to accept, even though the point of writing is to convey a message to the reader — a task hard to accomplish if the reader must repeatedly turn to a dictionary to catch the drift of things. Even harder should the reader decide to jump ship in the middle of a paragraph, giving up the endeavor as unworthy of the effort.
In his reference work “The Writer’s Art,” published in 1984 by Andrews, McMeel and Parker Inc., Kilpatrick told of the time he sought a word to describe the proliferation of political action committees, foolishly opting for a tongue-twister of mammoth proportions.
“Now, ‘proliferation’ in itself is about a two-dollar word, but that was not enough. The devil was in me,” he wrote. “At precisely that moment, a word wandered by. These things are like knowing sin. Sitting at their typewriters, all writers know the experience. The word is seductive. It slithers along, wet-lipped, scented with ex-otic perfume; it gazes at the writer with a come-hither glance. ‘Take me,’ says this gorgeous creature. ‘I dare you.’ Thus we are led into temptation.”
The word that had seduced him was “mitotically,” which my dictionary explains is an adverb associated with the noun “mitosis,” which has to do with “a process that takes place in the nucleus of a dividing cell.” To illustrate just how exotic and ill-advised that particular word choice can be, my computer repeatedly refused to allow me to type it as one word, insisting upon splitting it into two entities — “mitotic” and “ally” — causing me to employ drastic countermeasures to connect the two in proper matrimony.
Kilpatrick confessed that he simply could not resist using the word. “Political action committees tend to multiply mitotically,” he wrote. “I hated myself in the morning, but it was too late.” A few days later the mail brought a grumpy letter of rebuke and reproach from a newspaper colleague in Mississippi. “I had it coming,” Kil-patrick acknowledged. He had learned a valuable lesson.
Ironically, Kilpatrick solicited conservative journalist and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. — who never met the 50-dollar word he didn’t adore — to write a foreword for his book. Not to worry, though. In his masterful preamble, the late linguist famed for inserting in his writing and speech such puzzlers as anfractuosity, chialistic and endogamous stifled for the most part any impulse to use what columnist Westbrook Pegler once dismissed as fancy “out-of-town words.”
The Kilpatrick work includes a humorous primer on proper punctuation, the bane of many a fledgling writer.
As a young reporter for the Richmond (Va.) News Leader, he was inclined to write long-winded sentences. He was cured of the affliction by a terse note from his city editor. “Kilpo: I have something for you,” it began. There followed a healthy supply of dots, as in ………………..
“Those interesting objects are called periods,” the editor wrote. “They are formed by the second key from the right on the bottom row of your typewriter. Please put them to good use.”
Kilpatrick’s book has long sat on my bookshelf with similar works by other accomplished wordsmiths as necessary tools of the trade. Each book is woefully dawg-eared from use. But his will always remain a favorite.
BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may reach him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.com.